Dodd Changes His Story

In a bizarre turn of events, Chris Dodd has walked away from the claim he made just yesterday that he had no idea how the provision affirming AIG’s bonuses was inserted into the “stimulus” bill at the conference committee stage:

In an interview with CNN, Dodd denied inserting that exemption at the 11th hour, and insisted he doesn’t know how it got there.

“When I wrote the language there was no such language like that,” Dodd told CNN Tuesday.

Multiple Senate Democratic leadership sources also deny knowing how the exemption got into the bill.

Dodd changed his story today, again in an interview with CNN. Today, Dodd gave chapter and verse on how this portion of the stimulus bill came to be written. Mostly, he blamed Barack Obama:

Dodd acknowledged his role in the change after a Treasury Department official told CNN the administration pushed for the language.

Dodd, a Democrat, told CNN’s Dana Bash and Wolf Blitzer that Obama administration officials pushed for the language to an amendment designed to limit bonuses and “golden parachutes” at those companies.

“I agreed reluctantly,” Dodd said. “I was changing the amendment because others were insistent.”

You can watch the interview with Dodd at the linked page. The CNN reporter asked him why he has changed his story since yesterday; his response was incoherent. Reading between the lines, though, it appears that he lied yesterday to protect himself as well as the Obama administration, and then told the truth today because someone in the Treasury Department had already explained what happened.

To say that the Democrats are in disarray would be an understatement.